"And I listened to her!" Elenwen kicked the sodden rug with a fury.
Beridor shook his head jerkily, eyes remaining fixed on the ebbing currents. "Yes, Elenwen. You listened – because she wasn't deceiving you, she'd have had no reason to do this if your housekeeper hadn't-" He rounded on Lord Leyaro. "How dare you accuse me of oversight when you can't even keep an eye on your own household!"
"She was acting more and more like a frightened rabbit for a while," Elenwen put in. "Melthis. Should we send them away when they behave so?"
Leyaro shook his head gently. "Servants grow uneasy, Elenwen; it's unfortunate, but unavoidable. That is not to say vigilance is ever wasted, but one must distinguish sedition from ordinary servility." Back to the clipped tones of a superior. "Beridor. Whatever the circumstance, your notions have proven false. This wife of yours would indeed betray us, and now she has."
And if Leyaro had never broached the subject to begin with-! But Beridor held his tongue.
"Under the circumstances, another must suffice to fill your Palace assignment. You, Beridor, have made a grievous error and must atone for it at once. The Alinor hunting party is garrisoned at the Bend. You will join them in this pursuit."
On the road to the estate, not three hours before, Cilandrin had remarked on the unbearable tweeness of the houses in that new Bosmer settlement, Greenhaven. And Beridor had nodded and said, They say the architect wished to accent the natural beauty of these hills. Well, if you'd ever wondered what the Beautiful meant by calling themselves that... And she'd laughed gently and leaned into him, without the slightest reserve...
"Before the traitor passes beyond our reach."
The next time he saw her, it would be to bind her and bear her to Leyaro's secret cellar.
"I..."
"I believe the phrase was all to the glory of the Aldmeri people, was it not?"
"Even your own worthy efforts, perhaps?" snarled Beridor. "What with that servant of yours-"
"My work is, I fear, too essential to be diverted," said Leyaro, idly examining his fingernails. "And you-"
Beridor's robes became like lead sheet about him, buckling his knees, driving him to the ground. Belatedly, he registered Elenwen's small hand closed upon them.
"You, Beridor, are weak. Weak to the attentions of a half-breed traitor. Defiant to a Lord of the Delivering Circle. An intolerable flaw in the chain shirt of Aldmeris."
A momentary faltering. That was all. Beridor struggled to stand to make his case, lost purchase, fell face-first into the fetid muck by the streamside.
"Your steel will be tempered," said Leyaro, and even from the poor view Beridor had, raising his head feebly from the riverbank, he could see the Lord smile bloodlessly in anticipation. "Or you will be destroyed and thrown on the rubbish heap."
He was a fool. He cursed himself for a fool. One memory, one trivial, meaningless memory, and for it he had turned his back on his line and his people, he had forgotten his grandfathers and their suffering under the yoke of Tiber Septim, he had forsaken his father, the most learned mer he knew, resisting the Empire in Colovia even now...
And he knew, as Lord Leyaro roughly, firmly bound his hands behind his back, that no depth of remorse would do him any good at all.
Kellorn of the Blades rubbed his temples as he sat in the hard glass chair, feeling another headache coming on.
The Thalmor were bad enough, even laying aside their forgery of the last decade's worth of Blades contact with the Isles. Lady Arranelya alone might be worth half a shelf in the Archives. She had Potema's own tongue – had Kellorn not seen for himself the horns of blood-iron jutting from the avenues of the Imperial City, the broken Temple, the blood staining the walls, he might have wondered if he weren't the one being deceived. She knew the crannies of the system as well as any Tong leader, and hid in them not only from the law, but from public censure as well. As Kellorn understood it, she had once been discovered keeping a torture chamber beneath her very house, but had caught wind of the investigation and delayed it for a week, during which she had not only removed the evidence, but magically rearranged the lower level's floor plan so that the accusation appeared to be speaking of another house entirely.
By now, torture under the auspices of the Blood-Iron Provision or the New Crystal Tower Charter was widely known as a cause for outrage – an outrage not much removed from bellyaching, an outrage that knew it was vain and ended in a shrug. All attempts to make a more robust sentiment of it had fallen flat.
What set Kellorn's head throbbing was that the ones to blame for that were not, in the main, the Thalmor.
Taken individually, it was all reasonable enough. Ocato's hands were more than overfilled already, struggling to keep Morrowind and Black Marsh peaceably in the Empire. Summerset was doing very well for herself, no trade with the Empire needed. Council law was inviolate; with the extra century the Altmer got, the capricious Hold-Kings of the early Second Era were only just passed from living memory. At this late stage, utter the name of Martin Septim, even in the more rarefied areas of Firsthold, and you'd bolster your reputation as well by running through the city square with everything on but your trousers.
Collectively, it amounted to the Thalmor standing shoulder-to-shoulder, shields locked into an impervious wall, as the Empire and the legitimate powers of Summerset tripped over their own bootlaces trying to meet them.
Well, if there were one thing to be said for this Alinor contact, Fiorana, it was that formalities didn't seem to hem her in more than good sense would account for. He himself had been called to her chamber under the pretext of witnessing against unruly apprentices, which, what with the paranoid reputation she cultivated and the shock rune she consequently laid across the doorway, ought to suffice.
"Alda – well, she'd be Cilandrin for this – she'd speak grievance against Leyaro if the rest of the family won't," he told her. "More fool her to object that her husband's fallen off the face of the earth, but I'll take it, and Shasten's got good excuse to look after her girl in the meantime."
"She would die before she spoke to a magistrate," said Fiorana bluntly
Of course it had gotten to that pass already. And of course there was nothing like a Fighter's Guild to get onto the case. All mercenary organizations on the Isles had been eradicated toward the end of the Second Dominion, in a last-ditch attempt to bolster the fighting ranks, and the Septim Emperors had seen no need to reinstate them.
"No chance that she might get a personal detail," said Kellorn wearily.
"Reserved for Princes and higher," Fiorana affirmed. Summerset's old caste system was more dead than otherwise, but that only made it so the remnants, like the last row of stones in a long-ruined wall, were lying about everywhere to be tripped over.
Now that he'd made sure of that much, it was a good thing he was talking to Fiorana and not anyone of the pious Lillandrin cabal; Fiorana would at least hear him out. He leaned forward (headache momentarily surging) and raised his fingers to a classical steeple. "So much for the three-decade workaday scholar swaying this family, then. But what if it were someone with a little more gravity?"
"Seniority," suggested Fiorana with a thoughtful frown. She already had the thread, then.
Beridor's father Serranur headed the Thalmor Agency in Colovia. Fiorana's analysis of the operation was peripheral and incomplete, but at the minimum he dabbled a lot in the assassination of inconvenient people. When he looked between Serranur and his superior, Emissary-General Fintar, Kellorn didn't know whether to bet that he'd never been told about the unpleasantness that befell his son, or that he had been told and simply shrugged it off as everyone else in the family seemed to, but the fellow was no loss either way.
Unfortunately, with shipping as it was, planning detailed logistics between the Isles and the Continent was almost begging for a spectacular unraveling. He'd barely managed to get here, arranging on the fly to spend most of the voyage in a barrel of water tucked behind a few dozen barrels of pickles, and if not for his Amulet of Saxhleel he'd have had to be more conspicuous on top of it.
But within reasonable striking distance were the real heavyweights of Moonglimmer Manor. Arreis the Unbowed and Delbar the Fleet, who had sired four generations within those walls, and constantly spoke to them – and lately, every standing forum in the Isles – of just how badly Tiber Septim's men had put them through the wringer when the conquest first hit. Their first meeting while being pursued for separate acts of sedition, all their daring dips and dodges, every injustice and privation they saw. Which, to be fair, was all true, and on the long-lived Isles, even those who distinguished Tiber Septim's conquest from the Empire as a whole found it difficult to appreciate that twenty generations of Emperors had gone by since. But it did have the distasteful side effect of placing their entire line in Arranelya's pocket.
Unless...
He nodded to Fiorana. "Arreis, Delbar, of course they want to avenge the Empire's ills and see their Dominion again. And by the time they wake up and see that, revenge or no revenge, the new Dominion they helped build is giving them nostalgia for the mass executions in Cloudrest, well, they'll have outlived their purpose anyway."
Fiorana raised her brow. "Then you say it's all in all better to kill just one of them, if it helps tear the thing down instead."
(She was never one to mince words; Kellorn supposed that, as a priestess who routinely lied her head off, she needed to make sure something was uncompromised. He only hoped that sop to her conscience stopped at the words.)
"As every honest and lawful weapon is failing us, I don't see why we'd scorn to dip into Arranelya's arsenal," answered Kellorn firmly.
Fiorana stared harshly at the Tower memorandum on her desk, then finally snorted. "You of course know that if anyone hears of this – Leyaro, Melthis, anyone – we'll look back on these fools' years with the purest longing."
Kellorn hesitated only a moment. "Such dangerous maneuvers are what Blades are for."
"Then, yes, I'll give you your information. I'll get schedules to coincide, if it's in my power; be sure that they do, if not; keep it between the two of us, and trust you've the sense to do the same." She smiled then, a faint smile but the first real one he'd ever seen out of her. "The things Leyaro really does for the purity of the cause will be cast in their proper light, won't they."
Bidrasha saw no councillors about the servants' well, and the other servants preoccupied with their own work. She turned out the stocking in her laundry basket, and smoothed out the paper within.
Our courier has returned, and stands at our disposal. Firsthold's sovereigns both uncompromised; the King of Skywatch has recovered. A. seems preoccupied. Likely a welcome development, but be sure to find the cause.
Bidrasha smiled in relief at the note on Skywatch, which turned to satisfaction. She already had, the night before. Mentally, she composed a reply to Prince Shadyrn for when his laundry was again dry:
He believes there is an understanding among those Holds that have not welcomed the Thalmor, for his persuasions here have failed.
The truth was far simpler: a week after her employment at the Palace, Bidrasha had begun to magically veil herself, to follow the Queen's Councillors, one by one. One of Arrinaro's lieutenants had led her to a stock of persuasion poisons he had been preparing; though her alchemy was shaky, she could certainly find innocuous ways to color water or oil. By the time the sun rose, every poison had been changed for a decoy, and the bottles expertly resealed.
When first she crossed paths with the High Queen – it had taken at least a fortnight – she had used the mystic's ways, ensured that she had taken no poison. No doubt Faltana's precise and finicky tastes had been the cause. But truly, the news had been grievous: there was no ensorcellment. Faltana really did hope to escape her Council by turning her back on them and busying herself in the commission of plays and song and sculpture.
It would, of course, have been good if the alliance existed in truth. But an illusory alliance was good, too: their Agencies might act more rashly than they otherwise would, and so awaken a Hold when they had meant to cripple it.
And so, though Bidrasha could not dare show confidence – Khajiit were little better than work-goblins to the Thalmor, and far less to be trusted in a good mood – she harbored it as a glow within her chest throughout the day's scrubbings and polishings.
But that evening, on her usual, brief halt at the door of Arrinaro's study, the glow fled as though it had never been.
"Yet we retain the advantage over Firsthold, while the matter remains contained," Arrinaro said, discernible through the stone of the door only by long practice on her part. "These Academy wall-daubers are not half so bold as they believe themselves to be."
It was almost a convulsive motion with which Bidrasha put magical concealment to herself and prolonged her halt.
"Oh, surely," said a second mer's voice, quavering and fainter still. "Or they would have Agencies their own by now. But such false boldness is how the Subjugation began. Let's not have it be the means to its continuance. What message would you have me bear to the Agency?"
"I have written it. I mean no distrust or offense-"
"No, that is a reasonable precaution at this stage of my life."
Arrinaro gave a brief, perfunctory laugh. "The short of it, then, for your interest: We have determined their elimination ought to be done overtly. Shouting of their treachery to their own people. In the town square, if it can be done without risk of Morgiah's prisons."
Andrathel – he had not even had a belt from her since she left for Alinor. She had thought it not worth the risk. She had thought he would otherwise be safe...
"Overtly? They won't be wearing those New Crystal Tower robes, I hope?"
"Hmm. Yes, perhaps an amendment is in order... the Academy is not wholly compromised by the enemy, after all. Scarcely profitable to dissuade those who might welcome us, but for petty academic quibbles... let the Agents plant the Eagle Banner beside the targets on completion, perhaps..."
A silence. No doubt there was the scratching of Arrinaro's quill beneath it. Bidrasha steadied herself, renewed her camouflage, thought only of the doorway before her and the Thalmor within. She must be ready for the courier's emergence.
She was not ready. The door burst open and it was Arrinaro who emerged, hands filled with lightning and – somehow, in spite of the camouflage – charging straight for her. She ducked behind him through the door – it seemed the courier had already gone – no, he was invisible as well, she could hear another set of footsteps in the room – there was no time for this...
Lightning tore into her. It was all she could do to remain standing.
"I always mislike it when one lingers too long at my doorstep," drawled Arrinaro before loosing a second blast to the position she had dodged toward. "Afraid to fight back, are you? No matter – your body will be identifiable enough..."
The courier's footsteps were receding in a corridor behind him. But Arrinaro was no doubt seeing by her life force. Good for finding her center, not so good for detecting any finer subtleties. She feinted back, then lunged suddenly to force her way past him – with a sleeved forearm, so he did not feel her hairs – and dashed madly in the opposite direction from the courier. His voice was an unfamiliar one. He was likely not well-acquainted with the palace. Therefore, he was heading direct for the kitchen entrance, as his current path indicated. She, then, would weave a subtler way round and intercept him there.
At last, she squirmed her way out of a first-floor window. A fine-robed mer was there in the rapidly darkening twilight, stooped and withered with age, arms relaxed at his sides, gazing at her with a grave curiosity. A messenger's tube was over his shoulder.
"A Khajiit," he said. (She had not realized she was no longer invisible herself.) "So often your people mistrust the notion of a new Dominion. Why is that?"
"Does he mistake this one for a daughter of the Unbound Aedra?" she hissed. "Come of purest Aldmeris blood?" She did not draw nearer, but turned her ears for the sound of any others. "Or does he simply lie? Give this one the letter."
"Do you so love the Empire, that casts Elsweyr's exiles to the wastes, to die outlaws' deaths? Have you known the Dominion? I have, ma'Khajiit. Such things did not happen. Not within her borders. And so I must bear this letter."
Her birth-brothers in Skywatch knew no trouble from the Empire, save that posed by the Crown Princess – and she had thought the Thalmor worth hearing before the Anguish even began. And yet there was such conviction in his voice that she still did not move, and only spoke.
"He must bear the death warrant of innocents?"
"Innocents," he said, a bitter laugh under his words. "No, not they. The way was paved for Tiber Seprim in precisely that fashion. That they mean to preserve it by Imperialist lies that ought to have died by the year 435 at the utmost... that there have been four centuries of Septimate usurpation in the first place – no, you do not understand the peril of these daubings on the wall, and the guilt of those who craft them. I do only my duty. Farewell."
He swept gracefully in the direction of the road to Rivergate Stables, deeming the quarrel done with.
The tube at his side held Andrathel's blood on the sandy soil and a black eagle banner staked by his head, the soft grey eyes that once saw everything forever blind.
It was the work of a moment. One moment he was walking unaware, the next she had seized him with claws to the shoulders, smashed him to the ground, and torn out his throat with her teeth. No sport in it. Only the necessity she knew, and the blood soaking her chest.
"No no. No no no." A small, stocky figure rushed toward her, who had been unseen in the last gasp of twilight. How he had been unheard, Bidrasha was not sure. "This can't – what have you done-"
She widened her pupils to see a Bosmeri merchant. Probably dockside, by the look of his skin. She bit her tongue between her teeth, realized there was slim chance that she would ever reach Andrathe l with this message, that if she did Shadyrn would have no remaining ally in the palace, and, closing her eyes, she took a chance.
"He must say no more before he reads what is in this messenger's tube."
No response. She opened her eyes to find him glowing at the kitchen door, in the light of a vanishing scroll. "Locked," he explained. "Six-tumbler quality. Not a good notion to have anyone come out of that wasp's nest right now."
Bidrasha held out the tube dumbly, not quite comprehending how the conversation had changed tacks so swiftly.
"I don't doubt you had a good excuse," said the Bosmer. "Delbar... I don't think he has a firm idea that he's not getting his Second Dominion back." He shook his head furiously. "Scratch all that present tense. No, you scratched it, claws and all, there's no mistaking these wounds for anything else... Well, I've got no doubt he was doing something horrifying, whether he chose to realize it or not. But I hope you understand what you've done. We had one chance in sight to take down the Thalmor from within, nine days in which to seize the chance, and you have ruined it!"
"The message!" snarled Bidrasha; his accusation was as a swipe to the face. "If it is armament he wishes, he shall have it!"
He opened the tube. "This..." he said at length, "this isn't worthless, I will admit. The Sovereigns of Firsthold would be interested, I'm sure."
Bidrasha froze. "This one does not trust you with the message," she said. Partly because the acquaintance was short enough that trust was indeed an issue. Moreso because she had been striving for some time to convey a fairly unbelievable message to the Black Queen, and if it came with firsthand intercepted intelligence and the royal seal of Alinor...
The Bosmer made a face. "While I'm afraid I have no particular reason not to trust you. Right response, wrong time, and that's the only explanation that fits. But we'd better clean up quickly. For your people's sake."
A moment later, she had exchanged shirts with the Bosmer and left him to dispose of the body. She could be snoozing in some corner – this was expected of Khajiit – but she could not be missed.
Andrathel ought to have stopped checking the drop point long ago. It was clear by the first week that Bidrasha was quite serious about stopping communications.
But, evidently, the Crown Prince of Summerset now had a messenger he could trust. Ah, the savor of the small victories!
It came out a bit less sarcastic in his head than he had meant it to. After all, he had checked the drop point, every day, for some clear indication that Bidrasha hadn't run mortally afoul of the palace intrigue she knew was afoot. Always so reckless...
Evidently she shared the sentiment, by the content of the communication.
The warning had done him very little good. Events came rather abreast of the announcement. Not the Thalmor, not directly. But the night before he prepared to take this interception to the Academy Council, Morgiah had fled the city. The ship had been identified, a very fleet craft evidently kept in reserve since her first arrival on Artaeum, but no one knew the motive.
By the time he came to request that they officially sanction the pieces, that the Thalmor knew Firsthold for a political mess they would have no desire to be embroiled in, they had mosy definitely heard. The history master's pleas that all voices be acknowledged could scarcely conceal a squal of trror beneath.
Now they knew him for the mer who'd done the first paintings of Rynandor, and he had no confidence in the safety of that secret from the Thalmor.
He laid the little oilskin package containing a note, and a little sketch of himself by Bidrasha's side, at the drop point. There was no sense, now, in going anywhere but Lillandrin, to join the cabal once more.
On his way out of Firsthold, he saw, daubed under a window, a portrayal of Hold-King Karoodil in a bad imitation of the Last Stand at Crystal Tower pose, captioned YOU'VE ALREADY FORGOTTEN ME.
That was entirely too good a summation of his political achievements as a painter. He wondered if he shouldn't have made for Lillandril the instant Bidrasha left for Alinor bloody Palace.
Perhaps Lathenil ought to have given Leyawiin more of a chance. The city was far less accessible than Bravil, it was true, and far less of a port, but it did lie direct on a route to Summerset. And from Leyawiin he could have walked to Valenwood, if so inclined.
But whenever he recalled the look in the Countess's eyes when she floated the possibility of his being a subtle agent for the Argonian subversives, he thought better of it. True, the Count had begged to differ, arguing that he was, instead, an Ocato partisan from Bravil, but even if he'd been right... those eyes were far, far removed from all mortal reason.
For little better reason than that the Blades, who answered to neither Council nor County, had actually given him a hearing – not that he was allowed to know what had come of it, but it had been his best reception – he had next tried petitioning to another independent militia, called the Knights of the Thorn.
Unfortunately, Lathenil soon discovered that, though the Knights did regard themselves as an independent group, the head of the Knights of the Thorn happened to be the Count of Cheydinhal, and the Count of Cheydinhal happened to be infamously rash and obtuse. The barkeep at The Two Sisters strongly advised that Lathenil route everything but the coutly niceties through Bremman Senyan, the Count's loyal retainer (at the word "retainer," she had mimed drawing back sharply on a horse's reins.)
And somehow, his preliminary queries had landed him in some upstairs antechamber of Castle Cheydinhal while a member of the county guard gleefully seized the opportunity to bloviate at length to a person unlikely to walk away.
"Now I don't care what they say – there is no cup that can improve the taste of a green-grape wine. Your only hope is to have fish with the meal. Give me a Tamika's any day, or an Alto if it's a formal occasion. Bit pricey, otherwise."
Lathenil saw an opportunity to get a word in edgewise. "All smuggled, since the Crisis. The embargo-"
"Now, the shallow unflared bowl shape..." The guard's voice completely overrode his, then flattened out to the same dull roar of tips only useful to a hard-drinking gourmand.
It occurred to Lathenil that he had been waiting here, in this obscure room, for hours, being spoken to and told nothing at once. He felt apprehension creep up on him. He shifted his legs, felt his vest. The guard was Imperial through and through, but something about this was ringing very false to him.
And then the guard started to back toward the wide door.
And took point in a formation entering the room behind him. Guards – dressed also in the Cheydinhal colors, but no Dunmer among them and more Altmer than you'd think – surrounded three figures. Bremman Senyan. A young Dunmer dressed so finely he could only be the Count.
At center, a powerful mage of the Summerguard.
Lathenil thought fast. Mostly fighters, by their equipment. Those would have to get close to him, if they wanted his blood.
He edged backward, steadily, from the door.
There were murmurs among the guards, which he could not hear. He noticed they did not move toward him. He was a fool. They knew perfectly well that he was boxed into this room, that the mage would have him even if the rest proved useless...
"Count Indarys!" he cried desperately, readying himself for a leap. "The ley lines, the magic of the Dawn Era! After I am dead, know who it is you have served!"
"Well, that settles that," said one of the Altmer guards. "Raving."
"Steward Senyan!" (He remembered he was told he might get farther with the Steward.) "These treacherous mer you obey would destroy the houses of Men! Dismantle the Empire!"
"Impertinent dog!" screamed Count Indarys, drawing the cutlass from his hip.
"Farwil!" barked Senyan sharply.
It occurred to Lathenil that no one but the Count had, in fact, drawn their weapons.
"It seems I've failed to make introductions," he went on, with a stony expression that didn't quite reach his dancing eyes. "Lathenil of Sunhold – Ocato of Firsthold. He wished to see you."
Lathenil stood a moment, frozen. "How I have come to fear my own people," he muttered, eyes stumbling over the Battlemage markings on the central mer's robe, the Imperial cut of his hair. "Forgive me."
"Potentate." He sank to his knees in a daze. Most of him was quite sure that this could not possibly be happening.
"Get up," said Ocato testily. "I'm no Emperor, and Uriel never put up with bowing and scraping either, not while I was his Battlemage. I understand you're willing to give me a straight answer as to what's going on in the Summerset Isles? Speak, then."
"I'll admit," said the Champion of Cyrodiil after they'd descended into the tunnel from the camp, "I did expect more in the way of... permanent structure." It was to be hoped that she was disappointed by far more than that: on arriving in the harbor, Sentinel's guard had escorted her to the refugee district with nothing more than a look at her face.
"Ah, well." Artheyn flashed a bitter grin. "A hide tent is called a perfectly respectable dwelling in Hammerfell. The Redguards don't seem to notice freezing their arses off every night. If we don't like it, we're to quarry the stone and mix the mortar ourselves – after a year in the tents and a special pass. Maybe they intend to make sure this business about Vvardenfell being blown to ash isn't to cover up that we're really all thieving exiles from Elsweyr. Quarry's outside the site perimeter, don't you know."
Vienne smiled slightly. "I take it the Amir of Sentinel doesn't know about this tunnel."
"No. No, our dear Potentate smoothed the arrangement over with him by laying out in charter that we kept to our little holding-pen. Would I were there when it happened, I'd have shown the damnable usurper-"
"Artheyn."
His heart sank at the sharpness in her tone and the halt in her step. He just barely restrained himself from a backward glance.
"Ocato is the rightful sovereign of Tamriel. He is no usurper." Her mouth worked as she glanced toward the ground. "If only because he never had the chance to be."
That was that, then. If she called Ocato sovereign in the teeth of his betrayal at Bruma, the dispossession of House Hlaalu would never cause her to reconsider. But there were other points to be made clear.
"Much of the Council would have you for Empress, you know."
"No matter how much I try to dissuade them, yes," said Vienne wearily, resting her weight against the tunnel's wall. "I hit things very hard and then call in favors for it, and for this they call me a great diplomat. I can scarcely be in enough places at once even as I am." She snorted. "A charming modesty on my part, of course, and so they'll never get about the business of choosing an actual dynasty."
Well. Artheyn hadn't thought he'd need to address that matter.
"Then – your words on the matter to the Count of Bravil – they were that you would never birth a dynasty. Not that you would never be an ancestor."
"Strictly," said Vienne carefully, "I told him neither. But if you hope I don't aspire to Aetherius – well, I must disappoint you."
Artheyn simply stood, patient to hear her answer to the actual question.
"Oh, Artheyn." Vienne seemed between exasperation and despair. "Not you, too."
"It has been nine years, Dame Vienne. No one grieves for a mere superior so long."
"But then," said Vienne softly, "no one who knew Martin would call him a mere superior."
Artheyn raised an eyebrow. "Does your Grandmaster reminisce in such sighing tones?"
"Not my Grandmaster. I was a Blade for emergency reasons only, I hung up my sword when the emergency had passed, and we haven't spoken in-" She snorted, no doubt seeing how soundly this deflection defeated itself, and thrust up her palms in surrender. "All right. Yes. I would have been his. If Martin would have me. But the world was being torn to ribbons, and my wishes were somewhat beside the point. If he'd gotten himself killed on my account-" She smiled wryly. "Of course, I ought to have known since Kvatch that a love affair wouldn't much tip that balance."
The smile was trembling, a bit. "No, Artheyn, mere was never the word for him."
"But never mind that. Consider what I was doing at the time. Leaping through Oblivion Gates. Presenting myself to every count's court in Cyrodiil. Getting fitted for ceremonial plate armor, which I seemed to need to wear every other week as a good-luck talisman for Count Matius and the Imperial Watch and just about every stonemason in Colovia. Attending the Council of the First Year, drawn for the express purpose of finding an heir. I assure you, if I had borne his child, it would have simplified matters immensely. I would have seen her to the throne."
She scrubbed a hand across her face, eyes shut tightly.
"Vienne," said Artheyn after a moment. "What if I told you that Morgiah of House Hlaalu had returned to the mainland?"
"Morgiah," she said blankly. Then: "Of course. Barenziah's daughter. In lieu of the Dragon Blood, the line of Tiber Septim's consort... and of course she'd understand the need for a strong Emperor, she's had a taste of what it is to see an Empire disinegrate. Mm. They do say she's a conniving one. But then, that's usually a better bet for a ruler... Yes. This is welcome news. If I can persuade the Inner Council of the same..."
Artheyn felt a vast relief wash across him.
"Then I thank you. At your soul you may be an Imperial, but your heart remains with your people. I will see that your effort is not forgotten. Rest assured that upon your success, we will avenge Ocato's misdeeds."
"Dismissing him from his post will suffice, I think. He had me in his power at the Imperial Palace, when I told him of Martin, and of the danger to Bruma. He could easily have cried murder and had me dead on the palace floor before I could reach any more of the counties. He clings to his present power, yes, no matter what pieties he spouts to the contrary. But he is a coward at heart, and there is no need to begin the Empress's reign with the death of a Potentate."
To Artheyn's ear, Vienne sounded exactly as squeamish as Ocato when it came to the injuries between them. That troubled him. But she was a very willing ally to the cause, which would suffice, regardless.
"Far preferable to leaving him with his power," said Artheyn. "Then you make for the Imperial City, when we are done here?"
"Soon," said Vienne, getting back to her feet. "Not directly. After seeing your accommodations, I might see if I can't find Wind Scour Temple to save you all the trouble sneaking about. Granted I'd hardly be the first to search for the place, but if the scholars have progressed since the last go, there's precedent..."
Upon arriving at the quarry-camp at the end of the tunnel, Vienne shortly got caught up enough in talk with the organizers that Artheyn did not even need an excuse to detach himself, return to the tunnel, and fall to one knee.
"Can we risk her enmity, my queen?"
Morgiah materialized from her illusory cloak, fiery in the light of the glow-stone set in the beam beside her. "Does Ocato not have her enmity at the moment? Yes. Once the Empire is in hand, we can risk it."
Artheyn ran his tongue along the roof of his mouth, which tasted suddenly sour. To tread on Vienne's express wishes, after all the Dunmer she had personally sheltered and kept alive... "When the Empire is in hand, when you are Empress, House Hlaalu will be the greatest House of all. What purpose to vengeance then?"
Morgiah's face grew hard and forbidding, reflected in the stone's light like the very image of Mephala above the cremation pit.
"Do you know Ocato's specialty, Artheyn? As a battlemage of the Summerguard."
"I take it it wasn't Destruction," said Artheyn nervously.
"Karoodil knew hardly better than you, when he spoke of it. And yet it was his words that drove me here. It was the ancient magic Ocato knew, and knew better than any. The magic of the Dawn Era, when time itself was new and the land changed forms as we change cloaks... Those steeped in the art say the source of it thrums still beneath the earth and the waters. Their order says a great many things besides, a great many falsehoods, and they grasp for power, and those who would stand in their way seem always to end up dead. But the ancient magic... that is all too real."
She met his eyes with a stare that could have turned him to stone.
"Ocato will not die to avenge our House, Artheyn. He will die to avenge all the dead of Morrowind."